If you didn’t already know, 2012 has been an outstanding year for BMW in motorsport. The company entered the DTM season as under-dogs, after an absence of 20 years, but finished the year with its hands on the driver, manufacturer and team titles – comprehensively beating its rivals at Audi and Mercedes-Benz.

The French-Canadian driver, Bruno Spengler, beat Mercedes driver Gary Paffett in the final race, clinching the title by just four points, transforming his Matt-Black M3 DTM into an M Division icon.

So, what better way to celebrate the No. 7 car’s success than make a limited edition of the current E92 M3 with an identical livery. (well an even better way would have been to release a road going version of the M3 DTM, but I guess I’m just being picky..)

The special M3 DTM Champion Edition was unveiled at BMW’s 40 Years of M event, held at the Nürburgring this week. Bruno Spengler was on hand to introduce the new car, which will be limited to just 54 units – the number of times BMW has won a DTM race in its history.

The car itself is a standard 414bhp 4.0-litre V8 engined M3, fitted with the ZCP Competition Package, which includes powder-coated black wheels, gloss black air inlets on the bonnet, carbon fibre front splitters a and carbon fibre rear spoiler.

Production is due to begin before the end of the year, with first deliveries in January/February 2013.

A retail price has yet to be confirmed, but with the same basic spec as the M3 Performance Edition released in May, expect to pay somewhere upwards of that car’s £73,065. Given the European nature of the DTM championship, we would expect the M3 DTM Champion Edition to be limited to these markets.

Credits: Thanks to Tom Bertsch and our friends at Bimmerpost for the images and the tip.